Sony went on to say that it takes a “firm stance” against such behavior, which includes examples like “persistent and repeated, or prolonged, demands, excessive or unreasonable demands for compensation or apologies, and abusive language, threats, slander, and other similar behaviors.”
Other examples included “forcing someone to prostrate themselves” and “visiting our offices or related facilities without permission.” If any such behavior is confirmed, Sony says it may “restrict or suspend customer service” to protect its employees — and, if necessary, contact “police, lawyers, etc.” to take legal action or begin criminal proceedings against them.
My initial read of the headline was that Sony would now make it a policy to harass its customers that do not agree with the new plans…
Well, yes, but actually yes.
Same! I got to the third paragraph of the article before understanding they were not planning to harass their customers (or at least not in new ways…)
Isn’t that what they announced when deciding future titles won’t be on discs? I thought that was them plainly telling us, “we will be harassing the consumers of our products going forward”.
This is just the follow up where they’re saying “we won’t let you harass us back, because we are a big scary powerful corporation, and you are just a weak small individual.”
Nothing we can do about it, so long as the deathcult idiots support them.
If only we had our own FOSS only planet.
Me too. But also isn’t that what they have been doing these past months.
Has Sony just dared it’s entire customer base to take part in a forced boycott?
The equivalent of somebody getting themselves barred from a pub/bookies/casino because they know that they can’t do it on their own.
They say Microsoft and Xbox start to take a tumble and said to themselves “How badly can we fuck ourselves too?”
I’m in! As long as I don’t have to get rid of my psx, PSP, ps2, ps3, and ps4. I promise not to give them another dime, or use any of their shitty online services… Though to be honest I started boycotting them about the time the first Destiny expansion was launched.
They won’t do it. Gta is coming out. They are too cucked.
They want to go all digital but can’t withstand cyber bullying. Weakness disgusts me!
But people visiting their offices isn’t cyber bullying! It’s happening physically - the thing they’re trying to get rid off. It’s just consequential!
We made a bad decision and people got upset.
The problem according to Sony: the people.
Get bent Sony, you put your front line workers through this bullshit, you don’t get to cry foul. How fucking stupid.
Like 95% of this I agree with. Don’t harass support people who have no decision making on this and are just trying to make a living.
But
unreasonable demands for compensation or apologies
Fucking really? Asking for refunds is bad now?
Nothing more offensive to a capitalist than trying to get your money back
Or apologizing. Can’t have that anymore either.
Japanese companies in particular are complete cocks when it comes to refunds. That’s why Nintendo and Sony will just outright ban you forever if you do a chargeback. Nintendo will then give you one final chance, even if you were hacked. Not sure if Sony does. Similarly it’s probably related to Playstation removing Cyberpunk for sale entirely when CD said to just refund it.
Most compamies in my country will also have beef with you over that and I’m european. It’s more american thing with chargebacks IIRC. Most of folk here simply contact customer service/support and talk things out, more often than not getting a refund.
I mean, id ban you from my store on every platform if you do a chargeback. Do you now how rare that is? Do you know how expensive it is? Sure fuck sony but i get why they do it.
Maybe Sony shouldn’t suck if they don’t want chargebacks. Pretty easy to avoid them
I mean they are the customer facing entity of the company. Of course they are going to get angry customers calling in and voicing their grievances because of the actions of Sony.
And that’s why they employ the cheapest labor to deal with it, it’s just a front, they don’t give a shit. What can the support staff do? Not much, I’d wager, and I’d wager that that shit rightfully would piss some customers off.
They’re literally employed as an abuse filter.
AI chat assistant incoming in 3…2…1…
It’s perfectly reasonable too
Ah, yes. Desperately falling back on making a tone argument of all things is a sure fire indicator that somebody doesn’t have a single leg left to stand on. Sony’s decades-long pattern of behavior does not put them in a position to be able to enjoy that luxury.
In other words: Get the fuck outta here with that.
IDK, some of those demands are absolutely reasonable. Nobody should be making threats or visiting their facilities.
Just stop buying products connected to Sony. I did when they did the helldivers account thing back in the day. That’s why I never played helldivers, actually.
Protesting outside facilities should be allowed. Though honestly pointless, just give them what they want and leave their ecosystem
So unjapanese.
Looks like I bought my last PS5 game a few weeks ago. FUCK OFF SONY
I learned my lesson with the PS3, what took you so long?
I’ve been boycotting Sony since the Rootkit Scandal, what took you so long?
I forgot about that! Yet another good reason.
Same here. Although i did buy and enjoy Days Gone on PC.
Days Gone on PC
I liked it too, but I liked it even better after the simple mod to make it first person. Which I don’t think a PS5 could go.
You did not inform yourself. The “scandal” was already in full effect. Or do you just want to abuse employees without recourse?
Lol, tots… My goal in life is to abuse employees with wild abandon!
Have a job? Here’s some abuse!
Rable rable… Blurp blurp… DING DONG DING DONG!
This policy is against people who abuse employees. Not regular complaints.
The way it reads to me is “stop asking/demanding what you’ve already paid for or we will ban your account”
You haven’t paid for anything that they are taking away. They are taking away your ability to buy stuff in the future. But that doesn’t mean you get to harass their support people. Are you yelling at your car mechanic cause Elon said dumb stuff on the Internet? How does that help anyone?
So I guess the whole “we removed things from your console that you paid for because we lost a license” doesn’t count then.
If I buy a car from a dealership, and the dealership has my car towed after I’ve paid for it because Ford or whoever pulled a contract, you bet your ass I’m going to harass the dealership.
Yeah, but not the mechanic. Also don’t harass them but put forward your reasonable request of a refund of the value taken from you.
DING DONG DING DONG
The last game I bought was Ghost of Yotei. And as much as I really like most of Sony’s exclusive(?) IPs, they saw my money for the last time on that purchase.
At this point, and with the ridiculous PC parts prices, I guess I’ll just have to enjoy what I can on my steam deck, on a TV when possible with a wireless controller.
I’m not tossing my PS5 out the window any time soon, but this is it for Sony in my life. I think I have another 6 months on my yearly PS+ subscription, so, guess I’ll probably play GTA6 a couple of years from now. Oh well, there’s always books, going out and Lemmy.
Anything but walking back the physical disc decision
Anything but doing the right thing because money
Seems like at this point bringing back physical discs would be the money making decision
Long-term, yes, but you’re dealing with short term managers who DGAF about long-term issues, they’ll be long gone with their bonuses, leaving this shit for other people to resolve
That’s just good policy. Yelling at support personal or making them unsafe should not be celebrated. What is wrong with you?
Sure, yelling at them is bad.
But this is way more than that
You can’t ask for anything, or they could arbitrarily decide you broke the agreement. You can’t protest in any way, or they decide you broke the agreement.
Merely asking for what you’ve paid for to be returned to you is grounds for banning your profile now.
They only mention repeated or unreasonable requests. Not requests in general. It does not appear to be true that Asking for a refund gets you banned.
Yes, and companies can be trusted to not abuse their unquestioned power over their users.
They certainly don’t have a track record of fucking over users!
Why are you defending a multi billion dollar company like they’re paying you?
Them not adhering to their own policies is a different issue as their policies not being sensible. Attacking one using the other as reasoning is being unreasonable.
And who is the arbiter of unreasonable? Sony.
It’s their policy, they get to determine what is unreasonable, not some independent neutral third party.
I always thought this stance to be interesting, because it reminds me of soldiers in a conflict. The arguments are that the enemy rank and file are just doing their jobs, they have a family, the actual evil bigwig is out of reach, etc.
But also, are you just going to do nothing and let them steamroll you? They’re choosing to continue to work at that business, and are the only “frontline” that you can interact with. The fact that the business made a policy specifically addressing this common complaint, means it actually reached the ears of someone in power.
I’m not encouraging violence or anything of course. But, by design, there’s nobody else to voice your displeasure to. The only other option is to quietly accept their changes and be ignored.
If they didn’t want angry people calling, maybe they shouldn’t make terrible decisions?
Screaming at a minimum wage call center employee doesn’t actually do anything but make their day worse.
When you shoot the soldier who’s marching through your home you’re depleting the enemy army of people.
I worked at a call center for xbox. Yelling definitely worked because we had a protocol to escalate angry customers to tier 2 and they usually get some freebies like a few months of xbox live, some games or a gift card. There was a thin line between yelling/bring angry and being rude. We had the option to disconnect the call of there were personal insults
If that’s the only way to voice one’s opinion and be heard.
Any way, I didn’t see a lot of “screaming” in the policy. It says if you bother us too much, we’ll stop listening.
Which is the actual concern. No one here is saying you should be screaming at people.
Lol, call centers aren’t a way to voice your opinion to the company. You’re voicing your opinion just as effectively here.
The only language companies really speak is money. So stop giving it to them.
Right. Not heard. That’s why Sony put out this policy, because they can’t hear the complaints.
I’d say the complaints are working as intended.
Btw, I don’t have any sony products, so I can’t “stop” giving them money. But the idea that “stopping” further purchases is adequate remuneration for property theft is laughable.
I was trying to help someone I cared about get insurance denial information regarding cancer treatment. The insurance company (United lmao) personnel were the worst most inhumane human beings I’ve ever had the displeasure of speaking to. I’m nice and keep my voice calm. I used all the right words and requested things that were well within the rights of the person I was helping and the responsibilities of the people I was talking to. The number of times they just hung up, stated they had no record at all of any of my calls, told me what I was asking for didn’t exist, etc etc. I wrote letters, I sent emails, nothing. Eventually there was no need for treatment, exactly as the insurance company planed for. If every single person there woke up to the worst day of their lives for the rest of their lives it would not be enough to make up for what they did, and what they likely continue to do for a job. They are likely involved in more deaths than modern soldiers are.
All of that said, people really need to get a grip on threatening customer service reps. It’s not like Sony changed their policy retroactively or something. The whole industry has been operating this way for a while, often even the no disc thing. I would love to see all these people threatening others channel that energy into a boycott or something. I used to play the sims a lot. I already have the game but haven’t launched it since news of the EA buyout broke and I let them know why. People will scream at the reps and then never actually change their behavior. I know the people screaming are not a monolith, but either enough people care or enough people don’t. You being more threatening does nothing, especially if there’s no follow through.
You have the option to not continue to buy their products.
I don’t buy their games or consoles, personally. But I also don’t call Sony to complain, so I’m very much an outsider’s perspective on this.
You shouldn’t abuse or kill without need the enemy in war either. Doing so tends to be a war crime.
Yelling at and abusing people does not further your cause. I guess them going on a mental break, killing themselves or quitting does harm Sony, but the harm to them and society is much worse.
The only other option is to quietly accept their changes and be ignored.
Or a third option: you know, just vote with your wallet. To follow on your analogy and borrow from a famous quote: “[War is] a strange game. The only winning move is not to play.”
But yeah, I know that gamers will never do that. So, the abuse will continue unabated, and corps will own them more and more.
That falls under being ignored. Most people will only realise it’s a big deal if enough noise is made about it. Sony would maybe lose 10% sales from people quietly quitting, but still profit from the decision long-term. Right now the news article was only written, and we’re only talking talking about it, because enough people made a fuss. That’s how protests work; they’re not convenient or polite.
This isn’t a war, the customer service people aren’t walking through your home grabbing your games to throw in a fire. Harassing them isn’t going to have any effect on the corporate direction. If you want to get the decisionmakers’ attention, stop buying their products. If you keep sending them money, you’re basically just paying for the privilege of screaming at some minimum wage workers.
I know yelling at customer service is a shitty thing to do but who else do I yell at? The CEO won’t give me his number and the rest of the management won’t either. Customer service is the only place people even have a chance to be heard, and that’s why they get mad. It’s a systemic problem and companies use cheap replaceable employees to defer it.
Then don’t yell at anyone, just boycott the company. It doesn’t matter how justified your anger is, that doesn’t make it right to abuse people.
I agree
Why are you even yelling?
Typically people do that when they are angry
Doesn’t justify the behavior. The company must retaliate to do their due diligence to their employees.
If you must voice a complaint to the call centre, at least keep it civil. You’re much more likely to be heard.
You just don’t buy the product?
It is so weird, these people are arguing over the ability to keep a piece of plastic so they can then throw more money at Sony. For entertainment.
deleted by creator
And asking for refunds when we were all essentially scammed? They sold us the “games” under false pretenses.
When did they do that? I guess you could ask for a partial refund if they weren’t advertised correctly. But that would not amount to much money after all.
That leaves only one available option for protest. I don’t think they want to funnel everyone into moving away from PlayStation entirely. Or maybe they do, maybe xbox infiltrated and is taking them down from the inside, wait, where’s my popcorn…
Moving away from Sony as much as possible. I may or may not use questionable websites to watch anime and movies. and I sold all my Sony stuff except a PS3 and Headphones, which will also be sold.
I dunno, maybe keep anything you can pirate on, right? Because that would hit them harder?
That’s good for some but usually these websites arise as soon as they go down. It also makes for a grey area since you don’t have the media on your hard drive. That’s why Sony tries so hard to shut them down and push their crunch hole subscription. I think they shot themselves in the foot already enough that just not buying their stuff is effective. The silent No Thank You approach is really effective pretty much for everything.
I think they were implying you should put custom firmware on your PS3 so you could just play pirated games on it, rather than selling them.
I see, I didn’t know that was a thing. I mostly play on my computer.
Sony is making it so easy for Xbox to take the crown again. I really hope Microsoft can follow through and don’t fuck it up, we need competition, not for Xbox to take themselves out of business and turn Playstation into a monopoly.
Megacorp jerks people around and gets all snowflakey when they jerk back
At least we own our Steam games, wait a minute…
I mean, not with Valve’s blessing, but we kinda own them thanks to Goldberg and friends
Gotta love Mr. Goldberg.
Well, hell. Let’s all get banned by them so they have a real count of how many customers they are losing.
I’m so glad I never gave any serious amount of money to Sony, Microsoft or Nintendo.
Another reminder to ditch the remaining cloud services Is still have and switch to local and self-hosted alternatives.
